The construction of a facility is a multidisciplinary process, involving architects, engineers, builders and contractors. Generally, a team responsible for designing the facility will prepare design documents, such as drawings, showing the layout of assets such as fixtures, fittings and equipment located in the facility. The drawings are used during construction to install the correct assets in the correct positions in the facility.
When construction has completed, the drawings are usually handed over to the facility manager, along with other documents relating to the assets installed in the facility. These documents may include user and/or maintenance manuals, test reports, photographs, warranty documents and the like. The drawings and documents may be used by the facility manager as an operation and maintenance tool for their facility.
The hand over process thus usually involves providing the facility manager with a “data-pack” comprising, for example, a collection of printed documents, CDs, DVDs and/or on-line document management systems. Hence, during a hand over process, the facility manager may receive an assortment of electronic files and printed documents, such as electronic drawings, plans, manuals, indexed electronic documents and indexed volumes of printed material. The diversity and structure of the documents may render the data pack difficult to use in an operational role, and thus make it difficult to locate a particular document required to manage the facility, resulting in time wastage.
In addition to the above, for facilities of even moderate complexity, the haphazard organisation of the documents may result in a lack of understanding of the overall facility. The haphazard organisation of documents may create a risk of non-compliance with government standards or other requirements.
Accordingly, there is a need for a method for providing information on facility hand over that addresses one or more of the above problems.
The above discussion of background art is included to explain the context of the present invention. It is not to be taken as an admission that any of the documents or other material referred to was published, known or part of the common general knowledge at the priority date of any one of the claims of this specification.